Recent posts

#51

General Discussion / Re: I'm mulling over the audio...

Last post by jade_nekotenshi - Oct 02, 2026, 04:48 PM

Oh nice, and if done right it could also lead to a Linux driver for it.

#52

Off Topic / Re: The steady demise of x86

Last post by Adam_Hall - Oct 02, 2026, 04:44 PM

I am not an expert in CPU design, perhaps someone on this site who is can comment, but I am to understand that RISC-V only truly compelling feature is that is an open design and was more of a student project. If that is true, it is a bit of a shame.

#53

General Discussion / I'm mulling over the audio dri...

Last post by onionmixer - Oct 02, 2026, 03:05 PM

I actually have a ThinkPad 760XD, and I've got the Intel version of Rhapsody DR2 installed on it.

For the network card, I'm using a 3Com Rhapsody-compatible PCMCIA card. The VGA is compatible with other 760 models so I can get by, but the 760XD uses an MWave MDSP2780 chip for audio—and turns out, there isn't even a driver for it in Linux.

While working on other stuff, it suddenly crossed my mind while mulling things over: if there's no driver, can't we just reverse-engineer and take apart the MS-DOS or Windows 3.1 driver?

Since I already have code secured from working on AC97 and Sound Blaster Live (emu10k1) drivers, Rhapsody DR2 shouldn't be radically different either...

And I actually have prior experience reverse-engineering a Windows 3.1 driver to build a FUSE driver for Linux.

So all of a sudden, I got this feeling that... hey, this might actually be doable. hahaha

https://github.com/onionmixer/MDDataFuseDriver

It's a bit of a different category since it's a device driver for a SCSI device... but since I've already implemented something similar for OPENSTEP (though limited to the Intel version), I think it's definitely doable.

https://github.com/onionmixer/openstep-mdh10

As always, I'll be tackling it with AI... but when you imagine it, it's fun; when you remember the grueling pain of past struggles, it's a bit bittersweet.

#54

Off Topic / Re: A/UX appreciation thread

Last post by don_apple - Oct 02, 2026, 05:21 AM

Qemu can boot A/UX too, apparently, though I've never gotten the invocation quite right.

There is a self-contained A/UX system for macOS that uses qemu: https://mendelson.org/auxrunner.html

#55

Software / Re: Releasing the Radeon 9250 ...

Last post by onionmixer - Oct 02, 2026, 02:58 AM

Now that's super-cool. Working 3d acceleration? That's a first AFAIK! I was under the impression that we mostly don't even have 2D acceleration because of how DPS works.

Yes, I did use Mesa and SDL2 (since I based the work on sdlquake), but hardware acceleration actually works.

And if you check out my GitHub repository, I've already uploaded a driver version that supports 3D acceleration for the G450 as well. Radeon took a bit of time, but the underlying theory for implementing 3D acceleration is pretty similar.

Ah... the sound in Quake stutters just a tiny bit. That seems to be a limitation of OPENSTEP's threading model... so pushing it any further proved pretty tough. For now, I've squeezed out as much sound optimization (using SDL2) as I possibly could with the help of AI.

#56

Virtualization / Re: SPARC frustrations and hop...

Last post by jade_nekotenshi - Oct 02, 2026, 02:30 AM

The Git repo for my fork is here: https://github.com/jadenekotenshi/qemu

What I've fixed/kluged:

TCX now supports 1152x900 modes
SCSI hang is fixed, allowing NS/OS install
Lance self-test is fixed, allowing network boot
NVRAM can now be made persistent
Sound now works for the SPARCstation 5. We are the SPARCs who say "Ni!"
Stub parallel port implemented, enough to prevent NetBSD from crashing.
Several small bugs (keyboard detection on NetBSD, scary-sounding SCSI faults on OPENSTEP) have been patched.

See the attached shell script for an example config.

More fixes:

A number of bugs that jam up the official SPARCstation 20 ROM have been fixed
The CG14/SX framebuffer is partially implemented; NetBSD can run X on it but OPENSTEP is still having some issues, which should be fixed shortly.
SPARCstation 10/20 DBRI still unimplemented.

CG14 now mostly works, enough to boot to a desktop in NetBSD and OPENSTEP, though Solaris is still having issues.
Sound is... partially implemented but broken. The driver will load in OPENSTEP, but don't try to use it.

#57

Off Topic / Re: A/UX appreciation thread

Last post by jade_nekotenshi - Oct 01, 2026, 10:10 PM

Qemu can boot A/UX too, apparently, though I've never gotten the invocation quite right.

#58

Off Topic / Re: The steady demise of x86

Last post by jade_nekotenshi - Oct 01, 2026, 10:06 PM

Yeah, having to emulate rather than virtualize is a pain. That said, at least there are some good options in that vein.

#59

Software / Re: Releasing the Radeon 9250 ...

Last post by jade_nekotenshi - Oct 01, 2026, 09:01 PM

Now that's super-cool. Working 3d acceleration? That's a first AFAIK! I was under the impression that we mostly don't even have 2D acceleration because of how DPS works.

#60

Virtualization / SPARC frustrations and hopeful...

Last post by jade_nekotenshi - Oct 01, 2026, 08:30 PM

As anyone who's tried to run NeXTSTEP or OPENSTEP on qemu-system-sparc knows, it's so close but has so many rough edges.

I'm currently chewing away at the edges of those problems. When I have a ready fork, I'll post it here. I currently have it working, enough to boot and run, but graphics are limited to 8-bit, sound doesn't work and booting is... janky.

Attached is a MacOS/aarch64 binary to try out - you'll have to install the rest of qemu and make sure the data files are in place, but if you want to experiment, feel free. Something more polished will be here when it's ready.